Unable to access Lenovo recovery partition

Unable to access Lenovo recovery partition
‎01-11-2019 10:15 AM

I own an M90z. I installed Windows 10 on the system a few years ago. Everything was working fine until recently when I was unable to get a wireless connection. The Network adapter is an Intel Centrino N-1000. I was told it was not compatable with Windows 10 even though the link below indicates otherwise.



https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000029835/network-and-i-o/wireless-networki...



Before I purchase a new card I would like to find out if rolling back to Windows 7 solves the issue. However I am unable to access the recovery partition.



I tried through Windows and through the recovery menu.



Is there a function key I can hit after booting Windows to access the recovery partition?

 

Did you make the recovery discs?

 

Unfortunately not.

 

When you installed Windows 10, it probably messed with Master Boot Record, causing it to no longer work. If I recall correctly and I may not, there was a tool to fix this, but it was phased out after Vista. You could try rolling back your Windows 10 installation to when it still worked via System Restore. I pestered Microsoft into letting me download an ISO of Windows 7 last year as I had a valid COA and I can be really annoying. I'm assuming you do too, so you could do it the old fashioned way and downloading everything via Windows Update. I presume you don't care much about the recovery partition? Lastly, you may want to post over on ThinkPads.com, where you're more likely to find owners of ThinkCentres who may have a set of recovery discs or an idea.

 

It is possible to extract the WIM files from the recovery partition and manually apply them using WAIK. It's a really big pain in the butt so I wouldn't advise it unless you have no recourse. If you do go that route, look at the batch files on the recovery partition for hints about what commands to apply.

 

I had a similar problem recovering from a backup on a partition. I used AOMEI partition assistant, using or creating a bootable USB, I then cloned the backup partition to a different external drive (w/o a partition). Aomei bootable lets you work w/ command prompt, system restore, and a bunch of helpful features. Aimei Backupper sucks (not to be confused between the two). Youd probably have to create the bootable USB on a win7 machine (but maybe not). Here's a key to their Partition Asst Pro version,
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...secure-erasing-it.827286/page-4#post-10861903

You could also try Hiren's Boot CD. Not sure if this is official project/release URL (so scan it, ofc, or look around for it online).
https://www.hirensbootcd.org/
Hirens is great, an oldie but goodie.

I too have found random issues w/ backups on Partitions that didn't jive with win7. The crux... fixes that worked for me was cloning backup from a partition to new media w/o partition, then booting from USB/Disc to win7 system restore, where w/o any partition win7 finally saw the backup/Image w/o problem. Good luck!

 

HBCD PE uses Win 10 PE with full UEFI support. Sadly, HBCD 15.2 won't anymore on new hardware broadwell or ryzen.